Solo around a big chunk of SA (Oct 2014)

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Wayne Duck

Race Dog
Joined
Aug 29, 2011
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Location
No fixed address...Travelling Southern Africa in a
Okay, time to document my recent trip. I hope you'll enjoy riding with....from Gauteng to Northern, Western and Eastern Cape to Natal, Lesotho and back to Gauteng, 4 489km on my ace  :biggrin:

After having been forced into early retirement at the end of October last year I had many things which I had to get into order. This took me much longer than expected and wham, before I knew it, 11 months had passed me by! But, finally with all the t's crossed and the i's dotted, I had one month free (before my fiance finishes up at her job here in Gauteng and we then move to Underberg). Not having had an opportunity to use the bike much during this time my fiance thought it would be a great idea if I were to go on a bike trip...obviously I thought that this would be an excellent idea as well  ;D
Only thing is, she thought about one week would be required...I thought the whole month! In the end, I was away for 18 days, just a little compromise  ;)

Day One - West Gauteng to Prieska, 699km

I packed my usual solo trip bag (the mustard coloured roll down Big River Bag you'll see in the photos) with a few changes of socks, jocks and shirts, lashed it with my trusty Roc Straps to the seat behind me and headed off at sunrise. Today's route was all tar (I REALLY do not enjoy tar, but necessary when you need to pull 700kms on your first day) to Prieska. I was surprised at the good time I made and was in Prieska not long after midday! I found accommodation at Riverview Lodge, settled in and then went for a walk into "town"...okay, not much town so I was back at the lodge before very long  ;)







Above photo - End of day one. I took a picture of the trip computer page on my GPS at the end of everyday. I do not always keep the GPS switched on when I stop, so the stopped time, total time and total average speed figures are meaningless. The rest are an accurate record of the trip. Six hours and 49 minutes in the saddle.

You will notice on my routes and tracks file (I'll post at the end of this report) that there is no track recorded until day two. This is because the track memory of my 276C device was full before the end of this trip and so started erasing from the beginning!

Day two to follow...
 
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